


three kinds of yes

by softgrungeprophet



Category: Spider-Man (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Mentions of Violence, au where peter started killing villains but this is just about him and flash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22612048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softgrungeprophet/pseuds/softgrungeprophet
Summary: "Why'd you do it, Spidey?"
Relationships: Peter Parker/Flash Thompson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	three kinds of yes

"Why'd you do it, Spidey?"

 _Spidey_.

Pretending like he didn't know the face under the mask.

"Norman. Why'd you do it?"

Peter looked at Flash.

Wide turquoise eyes, almost-curly strawberry blonde hair, chest rising with what Peter could only assume was fear. At him. Surely Flash should have expected this. Just as Peter had begun to expect it—a man with the ability to bend a steel girder in half with his bare hands cannot go a lifetime without hurting _someone_ , statistically speaking.

Certainly not when that "someone" proved a danger to others, over and over.

"Why?" Peter let himself be cold, not moving any closer. "Why do you _think_?"

He didn't let Flash answer, waiting for him to open his mouth before interjecting—

"Gwen Stacy?" He gestured, feeling a heat in him he hadn't felt in weeks. "Harry Osborn? May Parker— _both_ of them?" He took a sharp breath. "Mary Jane Watson?"

Flash looked at him strangely. "Norman didn't—" He hugged himself, and Peter wondered if there were goosebumps on his arms. "MJ's in _Paris_. I..."

Norman didn't— _sure_ , Norman didn't kill his aunt, didn't _directly_ kill Harry, or Peter and MJ's stillborn daughter. Norman didn't drive MJ away from Peter, all the way across the Atlantic to live in France with the memories of the girl they had both loved. _Peter_ drove her away, digging further into his own stormy thoughts, obsessive and overprotective and—

Norman Osborn wasn't the only one—pushed from the top of a bridge with a silk noose around his neck.

Peter had stuffed Fisk's lungs full of quick-dissolve webbing, too.

And Doc Ock. Otto Octavius, he'd broken.

Norman was just the one who'd made it to the news with Spider-Man's name plastered all over the headlines.

"Does it _really_ matter?" Peter stepped closer, and noted the slight way Flash tensed. Good. "He might as well have killed my aunt, or my daughter... He might have killed _you_ , one day. He tried to."

"But he _didn't_. Hasn't succeeded." Flash held his ground, as Peter stepped closer again, staring stubbornly at Peter, shoulders tight. That all-too-familiar, determined look on his face. "I'm alive."

Peter closed that last few steps between them fast—Flash gasped sharply, audibly, when Peter went from a few feet away to right up against him in the blink of an eye. Hand in Flash's hair, gentleness belying the strength in his muscles. Peter cradled Flash's face in one hand, and said simply, "Quantum realities."

When Flash's eyebrows drew together in confusion, Peter leaned closer still to whisper, right in Flash's ear, "By the logic of the many-worlds interpretation—of the proven existence of a multiverse—there must be a parallel timeline in which you..." He stroked his hand through Flash's hair, coaxing him to tilt his head just a little bit. "Are dead. Have died. Will die. Are dying this very second. And I..." He trailed his finger around the shell of Flash's ear, down to his jaw. "Do nothing to stop it."

Flash swallowed, a visible motion in the soft skin of his throat.

Peter leaned back.

"You..." Flash stared at Peter's mask with such emotion, mixed grief and confusion and fear. "You were supposed to be a hero. _My_ hero."

Peter pulled him close again—wrapped his arms around him, palm pressed against the back of his head. Flash trembled slightly, under his touch. That only made Peter hold him tighter, with a quiet hush. "I never set out to be a hero, Flash." He smoothed one hand down Flash's spine. "I have a responsibility. To protect people... And letting the Green Goblin go? _Again_? Wasn't an option. Not him, not Kingpin, not a single one of them."

"You...?"

Tall, strong Flash Thompson, so soft under Peter's touch.

So breakable.

Peter could crush him like dry kindling between his fingers.

"I did what I needed to do." He kept his voice low. "What I should have done a long time ago."

Flash shivered.

"Let me take you home."

It took a moment, for Flash to respond. But he nodded, slowly. "Okay." He unfolded his arms from around himself and twined them around Peter's neck.

Peter shot a line.

***

Flash's hands shook slightly as he opened the door to his apartment. He wished he had anything to drink, inside, but he knew he didn't, just canned coffee and tap water. He'd been good. He was doing good.

Unfortunately for his shot nerves.

Peter leaned casually against the wall, suited up but mask off. All black, with an oily sheen picking out the pattern of a spider's web across the matte fabric.

"I still don't get it." Flash shouldered the door open—it needed an extra shove sometimes. "I don't get it."

Peter's dark gaze drifted toward him—sharp and arresting. Bruised from sleeplessness. That seemed to be his usual state, most days.

Flash went inside just to escape that look for a split second. It made him feel too many different ways, all at once. Hot and cold.

He didn't look behind him when the door clicked quietly shut. He knew Peter was there; he could feel his eyes on the back of his neck. No doubt calculating, that brain of his whirring faster and faster.

"What is there to _'get'_?"

Flash whirled on Peter—dark buzzed hair and long limbs and heavy brows, a shadow in the dimly-lit room.

"You killed them all!" Flash threw his hands out. Reached up to run them back through his curly hair. "You—you—and you want me to accept that—that the _only_ thing that kept me going is just." He took a deep breath. He felt so keyed up, so tightly strung. "I _idolized_ you, Peter."

Dully, Peter said, "You shouldn't have."

Flash pressed his face into his palms, trying to steady himself.

"What about you?" He parted his fingers, pulling them away to lace across the back of his neck. "What about when someone makes the same call you did, but about Spider-man? What happens then?"

Peter smirked, at that. He dropped his mask onto Flash's thrifted coffee table. "I'd be disappointed if no one did." He sat, a sprawl of long limbs reclining on Flash's ratty couch. "Maybe someday it'll be you, soldier boy." He cocked his finger against his temple. Pantomimed. "One shot."

"No—" Flash shook his head, sharply, staying in his place over by the window. "I'm never going back to that—"

He didn't ever want to hold a gun again.

"Good."

Neither added anything more. Flash leaned against the window frame, turning away. He let his forehead bump against the glass and watched the dark street below as if anything interesting might be down there. Nothing, though. Just leaves fluttering along on the breeze, tumbling across the asphalt with glimpses of yellow and red among the crackled dry brown.

He could just see Peter out of the corner of his eye.

Flash turned his head to watch him, sitting there, head tilted back against the couch cushions. Peter either didn't notice or didn't care, eyes closed, seemingly deep in thought. When wasn't that the case? Always thinking, and thinking, and thinking. Always something behind his eyes, turning over and over. His finger tapped a halting pattern, not a beat of any kind, more like an unconscious fidget. Like it must have been punctuating his thoughts.

Disjointed.

After a moment, Peter tilted his head slightly, eyes locking with Flash's.

Flash stiffened.

Peter smiled, just a little, some kind of bittersweet angle to it.

He raised his hand, gesturing Flash over. "C'mere."

For a moment, Flash didn't know if he should. But he steeled himself and pushed away from the window, to approach Peter—though he stopped just shy, standing at the corner of the couch, hesitant to move any closer as much as he hesitated to move away.

"You've done a lot of things in your life that you regret." Not a question. Peter knew very well that he spoke the truth. Knew Flash well enough to know that, as he held his hand out. "So have I. We're human, after all." His smiled ticked up a little. "Well, mostly."

Flash let Peter take his hand.

Not that he could have stopped him. Not really.

"My mistake was not doing what had to be done sooner."

Flash frowned down at their joined hands, unwilling to look Peter in the eye. "You mean killing."

Peter squeezed his hand just a shade too tight. "Like you haven't?"

 _That wasn't_ —

Flash's jaw tightened.

"Shh, I know." Peter pulled Flash forward—he barely even had to move, to get Flash to stand right in front of him. "I know."

His other hand met Flash's other hand, and again all he needed was this tiny flex to get Flash's knees buckling against the edge of the couch cushion. It was neither a surprise nor entirely expected, that Flash found himself straddling Peter. Peter hummed in approval, sliding his hands up Flash's arms, to his shoulders, to push down more firmly so Flash sat.

Flash kept his eyes down, head bowed. Hands pressed flat to the denim of his jeans.

"Are you afraid?" Peter's hands drifted up the sides of Flash's neck, to cup his jaw.

 _Terrified_. His heart felt like a fragile, fluttering thing in his chest.

"No." Flash made himself meet Peter's eyes, almost black in the shadows, picked out mostly by a streetlight from outside, and the single lamp beside the couch, in need of a new bulb. "I'm not afraid of anything."

Peter looked at him with such sharp, quiet amusement, like he might laugh at any moment but instead he just murmured, "Not even spiders?"

Before Flash could retort, Peter pulled him down, hands firm on the side of his head. Inescapable—not that Flash wanted to escape—

Peter kissed him almost leisurely, almost lazy, but for the way he leveraged Flash's mouth open with his tongue and his lips. Flash melted into it without even a little bit of resistance. Maybe later he would be ashamed of that, but Peter was undeniable in his gravity and desire. His hands were steel bindings on Flash, fingers tangled into his hair, stealing all the air from his lungs.

There was nothing to do but get lost in it.

***

They lay in Flash's bed, silently, listening to the little night noises of the neighborhood and Flash's apartment building. At least, Peter listened, with Flash's head tucked against his shoulder. He breathed slowly, as Peter stroked his soft hair. Little half-formed ringlets for Peter to play with, as he stared up at the ceiling in the dark.

Flash clung to him, though in a less trembling way than he had throughout the rest of the night, in various intervals. Now just a solid weight, very warm, half on top of Peter with their legs tangled together under the blankets.

Peter turned his head to kiss Flash's hair—an awkward angle, but not unmanageable. Flash shifted slightly, with a quiet noise. Inquisitive. Peter wrapped his arms around him securely, to hold him as close as he could.

To keep him safe.

Peter would do whatever it took to keep him safe.

Whether Flash liked it or not.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ["Rest My Chemistry" by Interpol](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykYMLQqD2kY).  
> Here is my Spider-man playlist i've been listening to lately: [link](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/68jC6u30ckT6IRpqqHe8g4). It's not for this fic specifically, just kind of a general spidey playlist, but some of the songs do work....
> 
> Like. okay. So, "why flash?" LOGICALLY the final remaining factor SHOULD be MJ, rather than Flash, and if I was some official writer, that's what I'd do. but the dynamic and type of disappointment MJ would express is too different from the specific dynamic flash offers—that of the hero and his biggest fan. so...mj moved to france cause i didn't wanna kill her off. this is like........ post-civil war, pre-flash losing his legs... OMD didn't happen and peter snapped after his aunt died. an alternate timeline in which it's a liiiittle messy cause I haven't really hammered out most of any of the backstory lol. 
> 
> I've actually been thinking about this sort of AU for a while despite the uncertain timeline, but the original form is one where literally everyone died at some point including MJ and Flash and that's not like.... easy to make good? And I don't feel like trying. I write romance stuff like. lol. plot is for other people. i just want peter to be intense and for them to kiss.
> 
> In the original AU, though, Peter's more of a mourning assassin type. Like the lizard dude in mass effect. except without the lung cancer.
> 
> Anyway, as for the black suit—THIS black suit, one of many... _This_ is a matte black suit with spiderwebbing pattern in a slight sheen like ITSV but black-on-black... The eye lenses are red-blue glossy. The spider logo... Not sure, but I'm thinkin it's contorted into the shape of an hourglass, more angular than the widow suit and white? That might be too venom-y but idk. MAYBE red palms and soles. Uncertain about the back. Possibly some kind of abstracted skull-spider... not like 2099 though. Or MAYBE the spider on the front is folded into a skull. or maybe it's only on the back. shrug.
> 
> what matters is that it's black.


End file.
